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Restaurant: Spices
Location: Phone: (858) 259-0889 Price Range: $5.95-$16.95 |
Number of visits: many
Last visit before review: April 1, 2001
Randy has had: Veggie salad (green salad, tofu, pine nuts, spicy chili lime dressing), chicken salad (lettuce, grilled chicken, crispy noodles, ginger, dressing), tom yum kai (chicken, mushrooms in hot and sour soup), veggie soup (mixed vegetables, tofu in clear broth), chicken with sweet basil sauce (sliced green chili, onion, mushroom), spicy duck (ginger, celery, onion, chili black bean sauce), chicken with spinach (mushrooms, garlic, black bean sauce), ginseng tea, jasmine hot tea, iced tea (jasmine).
Jeff has had: Thai salad (lettuce, tomato, onion, cabbage, hard boiled egg slices, peanut dressing), kai curry (chicken breast, potatoes, carrots in curry sauce), lemon grass chicken (half chicken marinated in lemon grass served with plum sauce), iced tea (jasmine).
Rating 10 (of 12) Excellent |
Jeff says: I'm not a fan of the veggie salad. I don't really like the spicy lime dressing or the idea of tofu (yes, I was fooled). But I really love the Thai salad. The peanut sauce is not at all spicy but very flavorful. I eat around the raw onions and cabbage which end up being the only things left on the plate. The way the hard boiled eggs are sliced into thin ringlets is really nice.
Randy says: The Thai salad is good except for that peanut dressing. If I were getting it, I'd get it with the lime dressing from the veggie salad. I also don't care much for the dressing on the chicken salad or the noodles that come on it.
Jeff says: I do like the chicken salad with its warm chicken, smooth yellow dressing, and thin translucent noodles.
Randy says: The tom yum kai is very interesting. On the first bite the hotness and sourness is striking, but after a couple of spoonfuls it becomes addictive and you want more. It has a really nice flavor. The veggie soup is disappointing in that it's very bland.
Jeff says: I had one taste of the tom yum kai and was bowled over by the sour and spicy flavor. Perhaps if I'd continued I'd have gotten the "good once you get used to it" effect, but I stopped at one spoonful. I didn't think the veggie soup was too bad. I ended up eating a lot of it, taking care to avoid the tofu.
Randy says: The sauce in the chicken with sweet basil is very flavorful. As the dish comes there are two things I don't like: the mushrooms are raw and it's mined with dangerous chili peppers. One time I ate one thinking it was a bell pepper slice. My mouth was on fire, I broke out in a profuse sweat, and I couldn't eat anything for about 15 minutes. All I could do was mop myself off and suffer. Even if you try to be careful about them, it's too easy to miss one. Therefore, I always ask for mine with no peppers in it, and also with the mushrooms cooked. The spicy duck, despite its name, is not at all spicy. It has a very nice flavor. But it's on the bone, and I prefer not to have to hack the meat off the bones.
Jeff says: My favorite dish is the kai curry. The curry is just a little sweet, and a spicy level of 2 is just perfect for me. If I want to live at the edge of my own boundaries, I'll ask for a 2 1/2, which I can just barely tolerate (stop laughing!). The sauce is so good that I dunk rice in it, and if there's still any left over, I just go at it with a spoon as if it were soup.
Randy says: The kai curry has a very flavorful, rich curry. It's a little on the sweet side for my taste, but still quite nice. But like the duck, this is on the bone. Like the veggie soup, the chicken with spinach is disappointingly bland. It needs seasoning.
Jeff says: The chicken with spinach wasn't too bad and I ate a lot of it, at first trying to avoid the spinach. Finding that impossible, I realized that spinach can be tolerable in certain circumstances. My litmus dish for any Thai restaurant is lemon grass chicken since they all have it although each has a different name for it, and it's your basic no frills, no excitement Thai dish. Spices does a good job with it, but there is so much on the menu I'd rather have. The jasmine iced tea is good. It's a strongly flavored tea served in a tall, thin glass. I had never had ginseng tea before. It was weird at first, but then good and very interesting.
Randy says: The lemon grass chicken can be a little dry, the sauce is a little sweet, and again the meat is on the bone. The ginseng tea isn't bad, but I've had better. It's from a bag. The hot jasmine tea is drinkable, but could be better and is also from a bag. The jasmine iced tea is quite nice. It's not too astringent and has a good flavor.
The decor in Spices is green and pink. The place is packed at dinner time. Last time we visited the waiter remembered us and that Randy likes his mushrooms cooked. We usually go at lunch on a weekend, order more than we will eat in one sitting, and have the rest for a future meal at home. Spices offers rice to go with the meal for an extra dollar, but they are one of the few places that offer brown rice in addition to white. The tasty and nutritious brown rice in a heaping bowl makes a nice complement, and is good for neutralizing any accidental spice overdoses.
The take-out containers are foil with edges that are crimped around a flat cardboard top. There are two problems with this: First, if the food is very hot, on the way home the foil containers burn your lap through the plastic carrying bag. Second, if the containers are too full, the sauce spills out over the cardboard top and makes a mess in the bag when you go to take it out. This problem is even worse if the leftovers are packed in styrofoam clamshell boxes as has sometimes been done, although they keep your lap nice and cool on the way home. It's a tradeoff, but the food at Spices is so good we always want to bring some home.
  
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